SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The latest statewide polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in California by 22 percentage points in the presidential race, which can be expected given the state’s deep-blue politics. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump by 29 points. In Los Angeles County, where Democrats have an unfathomable 53 percent to 17 percent registration lead over Republicans, Biden trounced Trump by 45 points. Such lopsided vote totals in a 9.7-million population county (more populous than 40 states) explains much about California’s overall progressive tilt. So pay careful attention to this shocking news: Nathan Hochman leads incumbent Democrat George Gascón by 30 points in the November race for district attorney, according to a poll by the University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times. Sure, Hochman is running as an independent and even endorsed Harris, but he ran as a Republican for state attorney general and served as a George W. Bush–appointed federal prosecutor. The reason, of course, is fear about the state’s crime wave and concerns about Gascón — a leading light in the progressive prosecutor movement — and his approach to public safety. As the Times reported, “Violent crime has jumped by about 8 percent from 2019 to 2023 in L.A. County, and property crime has climbed by 14 percent, according to California Department of Justice data.” It noted some recent violent crime drops in the city of Los Angeles, but residents are tired of the high-profile smash-and-grab robberies and eroding public order. Gascón is actually an interesting and thoughtful person and less rigid than some of the other self-styled progressive prosecutors who have won DA races across the country, in cities ranging from Philadelphia to San Francisco. But he’s part of a movement with deep blind spots. In a nutshell, it sometimes promoted meaningful criminal justice reforms but focused too much on reducing jail populations and refuting public fear of crime, rather than ensuring community safety. It wound up giving second chances to people who didn’t deserve them. “I recognize for many this is a new path … whether you are a protester, a police officer or a prosecutor, I ask you to walk with me. I ask you to join me on this journey,” he said during his 2020 swearing-in ceremony, per a Times report. “We can break the multigenerational cycles of violence, trauma and arrest and recidivism that has led America to incarcerate more people than any other nation.” Specific policies included ending cash bail, stopping prosecutors from seeking enhanced prison sentences, and refusing to prosecute minors as adults. But it didn’t work as planned. Gascón immediately received blowback for his approach. Some of that was, as he claimed, the result of career prosecutors who resisted structural changes within the office. But some of his policies, such as refusing to send prosecutors to hearings to oppose parole for murderers who have served their minimum sentences, telegraphed a soft-on-crime message and was cruel to victims’ families. He backed away from this and some other controversial blanket policies (such as always opposing adult prosecutions of minors and always opposing the death penalty or life without parole), but the political damage had already been done. In fact, the entire progressive prosecutor movement is unraveling in Western cities that are most hospitable to their ideas, noted a Politico article from May: “Progressive prosecutors are under siege all along the West Coast, as voters in deep-blue metro areas express their frustration with more lenient approaches to crime.” It pointed to tough-on-crime prosecutor Nathan Vasquez (also a registered independent), who won a landslide victory over progressive Mike Schmidt in Multnomah County, Oregon. That’s home to Portland, which is a progressive Nirvana. Even residents of notoriously liberal cities have tired of the street crime, panhandling, homeless encampments, and unruly street scenes in downtown areas. In 2022, San Francisco’s voters recalled their district attorney, Chesa Boudin — one of the most avowedly left-wing prosecutors in this movement — by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin. Boudin and his supporters blamed right-wingers for his defeat, but that’s delusional in San Francisco. In the California Legislature, some prominent members have been dragged kicking and screaming to toughen sentencing for the worst offenders because of their tunnel-vision fear of “over-incarceration.” This isn’t a good year to run as a progressive prosecutor in California. As I reported in my American Spectator column in July, Democrats delayed dealing with public crime concerns. After a group of businesses and district attorneys qualified an anti-crime measure (Proposition 36), Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies in the Legislature approved a decent enough package of bills that would fix some of the problems caused by 2014’s Proposition 47, which reduced sentences for lower-level crimes. But, as I noted, lawmakers included poison pills that would scuttle the legislative package if voters approved Proposition 36. After backing away from that cynical approach — designed to score political points rather than seriously address the crime issue — Newsom tried to qualify an alternative measure that would confuse voters. When competing measures clog the ballot, voters tend to vote no on everything. That effort failed and now Proposition 36 is soaring in the polls. In my view, Prop. 36 goes too far in the old direction, but progressives have only themselves to blame. This most likely spells the end of the progressive prosecutor experiment. Most Americans no doubt support sensible criminal justice reforms. Even many conservatives have long called for a justice system that is financially responsible, more just, reins in prosecutorial and police abuses, ends corrupting police-state policies such as asset forfeiture, provides alternatives to prison for low-level crimes, embraces effective diversion programs, and so forth. I certainly agree that we should not return to the heavy-handed anti-crime policies of the 1990s. But the public will only back such reforms if they feel safe. There’s no reason prosecutors can’t do two things at once — zealously fight against serious criminals and also look for meaningful reforms. Some California prosecutors, such as Orange County Republican Todd Spitzer, have sought out that middle ground. Perhaps after Hochman wins, we can build a new reform-minded consensus around that approach. Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. READ MORE: Newsom Intelligently Wields Veto Pen Watch Out for Rent-Control Madness The post Last Gasp of ‘Progressive DA’ Movement? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — Asking Kamala Harris about the historic surge at the southern border during most of President Joe Biden’s tenure, 60 Minutes anchor Bill Whitaker wondered if it was “a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as you did.” Harris has this way of talking when she knows she can’t say what she really thinks. So when Whitaker remarked that border arrivals quadrupled during the first three years of the Biden–Harris administration, she responded, “Solutions are at hand. From day one literally we have been offering solutions.” And: “The policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem.” Short word salads with no nutritional value. If you were hoping for the vice president to admit that Biden’s border policies were a colossal blunder during the CBS interview, which was televised Monday night, well, your best move would have been to change the channel. When Harris tried to blame Republicans for failing to pass a big immigration package, Whitaker pointed out that Biden invited a “historic flood” of migrants when he took office. For once, a major journalist pushed back on Harris’ lame finger-pointing. I exhaled. 60 Minutes made a big deal about Trump turning down its interview request. Be it noted, Harris turned down an invitation to a Fox News sit-down. But I guess that’s different. My one big beef: There is no question Harris knew about Biden’s declining cognitive abilities before he halted his reelection campaign. It becomes ever more important that Harris is asked about this because Biden is supposed to occupy the Oval Office until Jan. 20. At one point, Harris reminded Whitaker: “This is an election for president of the United States.” Then she added, “No one should be able to take for granted that they can just declare themselves a candidate and automatically receive support.” It was an odd statement coming from a Democrat who was handed the top of her party’s ticket without a single ballot cast. When Whitaker asked Harris why she completely flipped her positions on the border, fracking, and Medicare for All, Harris responded that she has spent the past four years going across the country and talking to people from various backgrounds, so she came to value compromise. Short, truer version: “We’re not just in California anymore.” Politically, that’s a good thing. Yet when Whitaker asked Harris how she accounted for the fact that millions of Americans support Trump, whom she calls a racist, Harris had no answer, only talking points. “I believe that the people of America want a leader who’s not trying to divide us and demean. I believe that the American people recognize that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it’s based on who you lift up,” she said. Across America, eyeballs rolled. The 60 Minutes segment included a cameo appearance by Liz Cheney, who actually spoke at a Harris–Walz rally. Cheney and her father (former Vice President Dick Cheney) are part of the Republicans for Harris movement. That makes Cheney the latest winner in the race for irrelevancy. Don’t get me wrong, I respect Republicans who won’t vote for Trump because of his election denial that led to Jan. 6. I just wish they understood that their vote isn’t about their rectitude; it’s about who the next president will be. It’s about the country. So when a Cheney argues that Trump does not represent the family’s conservative values, that just tells the base the Cheneys are willing to sabotage the very platforms they used to hold dear. I’m thinking about free speech, a tough border, and truly fair tax policies. It’s impossible to watch the Cheneys and not suspect that they climbed aboard the Kamala train because they thought they owned the GOP, and they’ll never forgive Trump voters for proving them wrong. Team Trump must love her. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Previously Unchallenged, Harris Had to Answer to <i>60 Minutes</i> appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The following is adapted from R. Emmett Tyrrell’s memoir, How Do We Get Out of Here?: Half a Century of Laughter and Mayhem at The American Spectator―From Bobby Kennedy to Donald J. Trump. The American Spectator’s “big picture” includes the notion that culture is more important to politics than politics is to politics. At least during my lifetime, political struggles usually have begun with cultural struggles. Maybe this was not true in Aristotle’s time when the Greek philosopher was writing The Politics, or in Machiavelli’s time when the Florentine was at work on The Prince. Yet, for certitude in modern times, what is to be decided today in politics was decided yesterday in culture, especially pop culture, often by illiterate adolescents. For instance, the values of rock ‘n’ roll steamrolled the values of “The Hit Parade” decades ago. Or when the values of nihilism replaced the values of the Broadway musical long before any election had taken place, and most emphatically before the values of a 1960s ithyphallic draft dodger replaced those of war heroes such as George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, or John McCain. In these instances, one sees how culture preempts politics in modern times.  The stirrings that accompanied the rise of Ronald Reagan put political observers in mind of the stirrings that accompanied the rise of FDR and perhaps JFK. We know that Ronald Reagan had three political goals: the defeat of the Soviets, the lowering of taxes, and the restoration of American greatness. Yet we also know that he was disturbed by the coarsening of American culture. I saw it as an opportunity at least to dilute the nihilism that was poisoning our education system and our entertainment. I noted the stirrings of the late 1970s as an opportunity to influence the culture, and I believed that the president saw it that way, too. He was unhappy with the recent Hollywood emphasis on zoo sex and violence. On several occasions, I saw him demonstrate with his hands how the famous director Ernst Lubitsh would dramatize an intimate love scene for his actors using only his hands. The former actor would reproduce Lubitsch’s scene by hanging an imagined “Do Not Disturb” sign outside an imagined hotel room door. The president and Nancy watched movies, but for the most part, the movies they watched were a product of the past, not the tawdry present.  Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine, which includes this article and others like it. My scheme to bring conservative values into the 1980s began on the afternoon of August 6, 1982. I had just entered my home office soaking wet from a noon handball match. As I was recording my game, I was interrupted by a call from the White House. A silken voice told me the president wanted a word with me. So, standing in my home office dripping with perspiration, I was perfectly calm as the president questioned me from the White House.  I had a column in the Washington Post the week before arguing that the White House’s assistant presidents were undercutting the president’s plans for tax cuts and causing a rift within the conservative community. He insisted that a tax increase, then being pressed upon him by congressional Democrats, would ensure three dollars of congressional budget cuts for every additional tax dollar. He disputed the news stories that the assistant presidents were conspiring to enfeeble conservatives and asked how a rift with them could be avoided. It would take six years and the publication of assistant president Mike Deaver’s egregious memoirs before any of the others would come clean and validate my claim that some of his staff had committed various acts of betrayal. As for Congress’s promises of budget cuts, the Hill never made good on them. We did, however, end the rift dividing the president from his friends. Our solution was lunch. Reminding the president that he stayed in touch with conservative economists by holding a series of luncheons with them, I suggested a similar series of luncheons with conservative editors to keep the president and the conservative editors au courant with one another and, à la FDR and JFK, to put the presidential seal on our attempts to create a conservative counterculture — a counterculture to the Kultursmog was what we needed, as I shall explain in due course. This article is taken from The American Spectator’s fall 2024 print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine. On September 22, 1982, we lunched in the cabinet room with the president. All was going well, though I was somewhat startled by the retinue that accompanied him. I had editors from the major conservative publications: Commentary, National Review, Policy Review, and the Public Interest. The president had his chief of staff, James A. Baker; his national security advisor, Bill Clark; his deputy chief of staff, Mike Deaver; his chief counsel, Ed Meese; his director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman; and David Gergen, then serving as his director of communications and planning. Irving Kristol, who was one of my guests, had convinced me that Gergen was one of us. He would help us do with conservatives what FDR and JFK had done with liberals, to wit, lend presidential prestige to political culture.  Art by Bill Wilson The lunch was very agreeable, except when I would accidentally lock eyes with one of these grim assistant presidents. For his part, the president was in fine fettle. So, I was emboldened to proclaim to the leader of the free world: You have won the political campaigns. The intellectual battles have been won, too. Your adversaries have no spellbinding dreams or revivifying policy initiatives that have not been tried. The terms of political debate have become conservative. No longer do we hear calls to limit economic growth, radically redistribute income, or to negotiate with every hostile country. Now is your (dare I say it?) Moment in History. It is time to implement the policies of limited government, economic growth, deregulation, and a strong foreign policy. You have the ideas and the power. Wow. I still remember the thrill. I had lived to deliver a stirring exhortation to the president of the United States in the privacy of his own home, and I delivered it while seated in the very spot in which Vice President Calvin Coolidge had slept while President Warren Harding had droned on. This was history in the making. The beginning of Ronald Reagan’s conservative counterculture.  After the luncheon, Gergen came shivering toward me (Wlady always called him Mr. Potato Head), and, to my amazement, blurted out that I probably would be more comfortable dealing with a staff member “friendlier” than he. Friendlier than he? He could not keep his hostility under wraps, even when there was no reason to admit his hostility. Gergen had obviously thrown in with the assistant presidents, and they had no appetite for a conservative counterculture. All my talk of “ideas” and “culture” was only seen by them as menacing. Our group never met in the White House again.  I continued seeing the president off and on, though only one more time did I mention the derelictions of his assistant presidents. That would be on March 30, 1987. I went to the Oval Office charged with reassuring the president about the Iran-Contra affair, but before I went into his office, I encountered one of his speechwriters, who told me that the speech writing staff, composed of solid conservatives, had been barred from quoting conservative intellectuals and public figures in the president’s speeches. The assistant presidents were being vigilant. I was urged to mention this censorship when I sat down with him. Well, I tried, but the commander in chief had other things on his mind. I never brought up the disloyal assistant presidents again. He would have none of it. His mind was burdened with something else.  ***** There was one remnant of Ronald Reagan’s liberal past that he had brought to conservatism: his surviving political libido. We saw it in his tenacity for focusing on the Soviet Union, tax cuts, and renewing the promise of America. I personally saw it in his efforts to create a conservative culture to oppose the Kultursmog. That was one goal too many for him, and anyway, there were not enough conservatives who shared his unique political libido. Of course, the president was no ideologue, much less a utopian; those values were buried long ago in his liberal past. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine. The post I Urged Ronald Reagan to Build a Conservative Counterculture appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Pam Key, Breitbart: Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday on ABC’s “The View” that she would do nothing differently than President Joe Biden. Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “As Vice President you worked closely with President Biden for almost four years. He was here on our show and he said there wasn’t […]

Geo-engineering Watch Director Dane Wigington Exposes The Federal Government’s Secret Weather Weapons System Now Targeting All Life On Earth Must Watch and Share! pic.twitter.com/Pomevsta6A — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) October 10, 2024

“The ADA will be the last to admit that they’re largely responsible for damaging the brain development of millions of innocent kids over many decades.” — Stuart Cooper @FluorideAction https://t.co/Tx9iQMhU1i — Children’s Health Defense (@ChildrensHD) October 9, 2024

from Sputnik News: MOSCOW (Sputnik) – At least 16 attacks on health facilities have been carried out in Lebanon since September 17, killing 65 medical workers and injuring 40 others, the United Nations Office at Geneva said, citing World Health Organization’s (WHO) Deputy Incident Manager Ian Clarke. TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/ “Ian Clarke, World Health […]